No namdropping can be worse than the one where they quoted elon musk as one of the geniuses of history.
this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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there is also the funny one where they showed picard trying to prove fermat's last theorem - because, of course, apart from being starship captain, philosopher and flute player, why wouldn't he be elite theoretical mathematician in his spare time? π
picard presented it as unsolved for 800 years - it was postulated around 1637 and not yet proved at the time the episode broadcasted in 1989. it was proved in 1994.
Isaac Asimov wrote a short story that predicted that humans would never be able to climb to the peak of Mt. Everest, and the story's publication got delayed so long that by the time it was published, someone had already summited Everest.
So he predicted something would never happen after that thing had already happened.
oh that's funny. so they did not stop the publication in spite of having a chance?
The flute playing, at least, was learned over the course of another lifetime.
fair point. so maybe there was another lifetime not covered on screen that turned him into high-level mathematician :D
Knowing these guys, probably!
A starship captain being really good at math wouldn't surprise me. These people are steeped in science and math since they went to the academy, if not before. And if you're going to live on a starship light years from home you're gonna pick up a bunch of hobbies to keep you busy. Doing math problems seems exactly the type of hobby JL would pick up.
Also today people can learn advanced calculus in high school, and thereβs been advocation for people to begin calculus in elementary school. I donβt think itβs too much of a stretch to think that they have highly advanced math education in the future.
They do cover advanced and currently non-existent forms of math in school in Star Trek. There's definitely a scene with like a 10 year old complaining about their calculus homework.
"being really good at math" is not like acing your high school math test. lot of people are "really good in math" and get some math as part of their curriculum - physicists, computer scientists, engineers... absolvents of starfleet academy, i guess.
doing high level math means you get bc, masters, phd in math, you spend 10 years doing pure math before you even leave school, then you spend another 30 to 50 years doing pure month, and if you are lucky, your research area will one day somehow connects to the unfinished problem and it clicks for you.
it is not a hobby you pick up between poker and rubic's cube, just because you like puzzles.
Dropping the societal expectations of our time, one who has an aptitude for math in a post scarcity environment could simply choose to pursue some avenue therein. You'd think that would still have to be a large portion of focus, but we can give Picard some benefit of the doubt for being good at whatever field, plus his other hobbies and interests.
picard is free to pursue his hobbies, but math on this level is not a hobby. it is a full time work for which picard has neither education, nor the time. it is not like you stare at the blank paper for a 30 minutes a day hoping something will happen.
Wiles was working on a completely different problem, which ultimately clicked for him and allowed him to transfer the findings to the FLT. but he was a person with really specialized knowledge that he spent long time acquiring.
this whole argument is like showing picard doing some advanced neurosurgery that no neurosurgeon in a known universe can do, just to kill some time between bridge shift and holodeck, because why not, he passed the basic medical in a starfleet academy, so why couldn't he pick up a hobby? it would be immediately clear how absurd such scene would be.
You don't have to be Wiles to attempt unsuccessfully to prove the theorem. Fermat famously claimed to have a simple and elegant proof. Before we understood how to actually prove it, there was always a small chance that maybe there was such a proof and all we needed was the right type of creative lateral thinking to rediscover it. That's what Picard was doing. Now that we understand the problem better, nobody really thinks such a proof exists, but that wasn't as well known at the time the episode was written.
nobody really thinks such a proof exists, but that wasnβt as well known at the time the episode was written
that's incorrect. there were attempts at a proof by lame and kummer around the half of 19th century and no later than that people were aware that mentioned fermat's notice was probably bullshit - he either made a mistake, or had proof for some narrow case which he wrongly assumed was general proof.
it was clear at that point that there is no proof that would be discoverable by someone without proper mathematical education just because he "had an idea".
you can of course argue that doesn't mean picard couldn't attempt that, but it is quite a stretch. reality is, that some writer read about it somewhere and incorporated it into the script without thinking about it twice and as a result gave us this joke, because - well - predicting future is hard.
In fairness, Picard was presented as one of the greatest men of his generation. He was not at all intended to be average, even among starship captains, which is already a pretty elite group.
In fairness, Picard was presented as one of the greatest men of his generation.
is he? being your favorite captain is not equivalent to the claim above.
Being the captain of the flagship of Starfleet and being the designated the Starfleet representative for MOST of the diplomatic achievements of his era certainly does suggest that the authorities of his era certainly made this assessment. Having actually saved Humanity, NUMEROUS other species, and the entire concept of biological life in the entire universe during his tenure makes it an objective reality.
he was good leader who was not afraid to surround himself with other smart people and utilize their expertise. that doesn't mean he is some superhuman who mastered every scientific field in existence.
superhuman who mastered every scientific field in existence.
Who said he was? Did you reply to the wrong comment?
bye, sealion...
Ah yes, the logical fallacy of "noticing that the other person can't read." Good catch.
That was the upset in the timeline that somehow delayed or prevented the Bell Riots.
He was already slated for notoriety by being the helmsman of Voyager. But nooo, just had to push the boundaries to salamanderism.
Tom was literally the first person I ever knew to hate touch screen controls for the exact reasons touchscreen controls suck IRL.
I would argue that Yuri Gagarin is a better fit in this list than Neil Armstrong, with regards to pushing boundaries. But, whatcha gonna do when a show is made in the US, targeted at Americans...
I won't stand for this Laika erasure.
Question here. Did Neil Armstrong (and the other Apollo astronauts) actually fly to the moon i.e. were they actively changing course and speed or did they just do "very complicated falling"?
Spaceflight does usually have much more automation that earth-based flight for sure. Modern spacecraft are capable of doing every part of flight automatically. In the 1960s, automation was less sophisticated, so they did more intervention than current astronauts do. It is flying in very different ways for sure. They were all very qualified test pilots (the best in the world at the time). There were many course corrections, but those were aided by computers, with data fed from the ground calculated by ground computers.
However, Armstrong did do the landing on the moon by hand. The automated landing sequence was overridden due to too many boulders in the landing area, so He (with a LOT of assistance from Buzz Aldrin) did the flying and landing by hand.
All other moon landings were more or less automatic. Armstrong's landing had the lightest touchdown of any.
Outside of automation, surely there were course corrections.